


Soon a Happy Ending

by fishingclocks



Category: Thumbelina (1994), Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Thumbelina Fusion, Fairy Prince Victor, M/M, Tags to be added, Thumbelina Yuuri
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-25
Updated: 2017-01-25
Packaged: 2018-09-19 18:52:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9455825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fishingclocks/pseuds/fishingclocks
Summary: Once upon a time, oh so very long ago...Would you like to hear a story, little one? The sun's almost set, but I think we still have time.





	

Once upon a time, oh so _very_ long ago, in a charming little house in the vale, there lived a man and a woman who, in most respects, were quite content. One charmingly stubborn little girl graced their lives, they lived quite well off of the land passed down from their parents and the occasional sale of the cattle the man tended to up in the mountain; they were warm, never hungry, and little complaints about their circumstances could be made. I add the caveat of ‘most’ in respect to their happiness, however, for several reasons—many mundane, like how the cabbages could always survive the frost but the winter squash could not, or how to keep their daughter out of the preserves; small concerns for big and happy people, easily ignored. Hiroko was the woman’s name, Toshiya the man’s; their daughter’s name was Mari, and between the three of them, they _thought_ they were quite complete.

They would forever praise fate that they were, in that, quite wrong.

 With little more than a week left til autumn’s surrender to winter, Yuuri stood on top of the fence, nothing but trousers and a short _svita_ to shelter him from early morning’s frosty chill, and looked tremulously at the pigs below.

The light of early morning dripped into the valley like cold molasses, and even wearing his spectacles Yuuri had to wink his eyes—like this, love—and tilt his head _just so_ to be able to see anything but shapeless, shifting, snoring blotches. Gripping his fence post that much more carefully, Yuuri recited to himself his very clever plan, and quietly panicked. He’d _had_ a plan, really he had; it was just that the extent of it led up to this moment, balanced precariously on the rickety fence his father had been swearing he would replace for years, and not much further.

Yuuri had planned to feed the pigs, of course; pulled himself outside hours before anyone on the farm would even dream of waking, made the trek over to the pigpen, climbed the fence. Now he stands, squinting at the vague gray shape that must be the pig feed, and a pit opens up where his stomach should be.

The reason behind Yuuri’s behavior is quite easily explained, though it may take a moment of historical recount.

Yuuri was brought into the world by a witch. Not by human means, of course—witches are much too clever to involve themselves in such nasty business as human fraternization, as you know—though he did come as quite the surprise. No, Yuuri was born by magic. The valley in which Hiroko and Toshiya and Mari lived was, through no fault of their own, inhabited by a great many magical beings, due to its position over the Earth’s inner core and under the stars of every season—Hiroko’s father had settled down at one end of the valley, quite accidentally disturbing a great civilization of floral fairies in the process. Luckily for him, Hiroko’s father was a very likable and polite man, and, as a reward for being the only decent human being that any of their kind had come into contact with, the floral fairies had allowed him to keep a little of the land. They had not accounted for the human propensity to multiply, however, and when Hiroko and her ilk had taken up the land in her father’s place, there began a mutual non-communication between the valley fairies and the humans, with which both parties were well-pleased.

This did not change the fact that, at the other end of the valley, there lived a witch. Her name was secret, though if you whispered thoughts on the scent of a freshly cut cedar, and the stubborn winter bloom of honeywort, she was known to sometimes appear. She prided herself in every endeavor she undertook, but most of all, she prided herself on her garden. One day, while casting amusing spells on her begonias, one missed its mark, and landed itself directly on one of her curious blue roses. Within two days, who should be sitting there in the middle of her rose but a tiny, tiny child; no bigger than her thumb. The witch, of course, had had no _intention_ of growing a child from out of her roses, and was rather disinclined to raise one. So, she took the baby, magicked herself from her end of the vale to the other, and asked the family of humans who lived there to please raise the peculiar little child. Where the witch saw peculiarity, however, the Hiroko’s family saw delicate beauty, and gladly took him in.

Not a day passed by that Yuuri wasn’t grateful for it.

The problem with living so close to the ground, a reminder of your size at every turn in the bustle of a human farm, was that you could not _help_ much at all without sending your dear family into flights of terror. The problem with _this_ was that Yuuri then felt quite useless to them, and from that feeling, his mind spun a great many harmful lies.,

Yuuri looked down at the pigs once more and said, “Why am I doing this? I’m not brave.” This was a lie, but for now Yuuri quite believed it. “I should just go back inside and go back to bed.” But he’d gotten himself this far! And if Yuuri tried, he could see a path through the pigs to the feed on the other side, and Yuuri’s own caution was being overruled by an emotion that no human language had ever managed to find a word for, but vaguely, meant ‘the need to prove oneself, by whatever means necessary’. “This was a terrible idea,” Yuuri said, and made up his mind.

That night, Yuuri took dinner to his room.

 

* * *

 

The entire day had been one disappointment to another for him. As soon as he had started to cut through the pigpen, what had once been shapeless, snoring blobs had suddenly become very noisy, and _very_ awake. He had dodged their trampling hooves for what felt like hours, heart frozen and scrambling back to the safety of the fence. By the time his father and sister had stumbled over to the pen to see what the noise was about, Yuuri was covered from head to foot in mud and table scraps, and lay curled into himself under the feed trough.

When they finally found Yuuri’s hiding place, his family had been terrified; then his mother made her way outside, and Yuuri had been subject to the most infuriated scolding he had ever received in his life. After apologizing so many times the words almost lost their meaning, Yuuri had been taken inside to clean himself up.

The rest of the day after that had passed in a blur. By the time his family had finished with the work around the farm and dinner had been set on the table, Yuuri’s mood was very black indeed. Thanking his mother under his breath, Yuuri took his bowl from his place at the table, and left down the elevated wooden walkway his father had carved for him so many year ago, held in the air by yarn too course for his mother to knit with. The little path lead to a hanging basket that had held a family of sparrows for many years when Yuuri’s mother was a young girl; it had been brought inside and cleaned when Yuuri had arrived. Inside was a blanket to protect Yuuri’s skin from the rough basket walls—it was a gift from the witch, who visited quite often, and was woven by her magic, without even the aid of a loom—and, nestled into the very back of the basket, was Yuuri’s most prized possession.

Carefully balancing the bowl in one hand, Yuuri picked his way through the basket and over to one of his makeshift chairs—a round piece of wood what Mari had hacked off of a broken leg of a stool; it was unevenly cut, but she’d spent painstaking hours sanding it smooth, and Yuuri appreciated the gesture. Setting down his dinner, Yuuri ran his hands gently over the soft leather cover of his book. It stood taller than Yuuri twice over, and no gold leaf lettering graced any part of the cover like his mother’s memories of the grand volumes she had seen, traveling in her younger days, but it was the only book that their little family could afford to own, and Yuuri adored it without a care. Carefully folding open cover and page after page, Yuuri flipped yellowed sheet after sheet until he came across his favorite one. Yuuri’s grandfather had written the book, not long after he’d built his house in the vale, and though he had been a simple man, who worked with wood and leather and stone, not words, Yuuri had always regarded the book with fascination. The pages were well-worn with the evidence of his fascination.

The book recounted, in as much detail as his grandfather could bring himself to put down, his experiences with the magical inhabitants of the vale; particularly, the fairies.

When Yuuri heard the telltale rustle of someone coming to stand at the front of his basket, he didn’t have to turn around to know who was there.

“Do you think Grandfather was telling the truth, mama?” Yuuri asked. Paints stained the page where text made room for an illustration, and his fingers brushed against the delicate lines of a painted fairy’s hand. They were the same height.

“I have no proof, my child,” said Hiroko. Her voice was laden with the multifaceted concern of a mother, but always, always truthful. “I thought I might have seen one, once; out of the corner of my eye. But then, it’s a matter of belief, isn’t it?”

Tilting his head, Yuuri turned to meet her eye. “What do you mean?”

“There are a great many things in the world that can be ascribed to magic, child; none more magical than you.” Her hand cupped the side of the basket, and her eyes wrinkled with the complexity of her smile. Yuuri came up to the front of the basket, and laid a delicate hand on the bridge of her nose. Hiroko leaned into the touch, and closed her eyes. “If you chose to truly believe, Yuuri, then what could stop you from finding them, child?”

Yuuri groaned. “Mama, I’m three seasons younger than Mari; not a child.”

Hiroko took a step away from the basket, eyes dancing. “Ah, but you’ll always be my child.”

To that, Yuuri made no effort to argue. After a moment of quiet, marked by Hiroko’s warm and keen eyes content to watch, and the faint sound of his father and Mari quietly bickering by the fire, he smiled for her, and leaned against the side of his basket. “I’m tired, Mother; I think I’ll be going to bed.”

 

* * *

 

When Yuuri told his mother he was tired, that was the truth. From the events of the early morning, and the fallout of said ‘events’, to the ever-present combination of guilt and a vague feeling of emptiness that permeated his daily life, Yuuri, by the time the sun had fallen and his mother said ‘Sleep well,’ was well and truly exhausted.

That didn’t stop the second part from being an outright, baldfaced lie.

We can forgive Yuuri, I think. You see, this lie was not in any way a _new_ one. In fact, every cool night of autumn and early winter, with the moon lighting his path, Yuuri crept out from the cottage. Even despite his size among the terrifying objects of his human family’s home, it was quite easy, really. He would wait until the last light had been blown out, and the night ire was safely lit in the hearth, so that his escape wouldn’t stir a soul. Then, Yuuri would slip down his small wooden path to the table, climb from there to his mother’s rocking chair—careful past her basket of mending, which he knew from experience was difficult to escape should he fall inside, and quite pointy—and up to the window ledge. There, there might have been for Yuuri quite the dead end, were it not for a fortunate combination of his grandfather’s ignorance, and his father’s procrastination.

When the cottage had been built all those years ago, his grandfather had forget sheets of glass enough for the building to have one window; a luxury! Sadly, one his grandfather had not known much about, for when he placed the panes of glass in their wooden frame, he used a mortar made of clay. The seal was brittle, after all those years, and very fragile. Yuuri’s mother had for years on end been asking her husband to remedy this, but Toshiya had yet to find the time. Because of the tenuous hold of the clay, then, Yuuri was able to take a pane, and swing it open, like a grand door sized for his own fairy-like body.

Yuuri slipped from the house this way every night that he thought he might not freeze—completely unbeknownst, of course, to his family. A lie indeed, but a lie practiced; and quite thrilling.

The other point of view, darling, is that, hadn’t Yuuri given in to his nocturnal habits that night, _you_ mightn’t be here; and I certainly wouldn’t be telling dear Yuuri’s story.

Of course, the story does not belong to only him.

But we’re getting there, dear.

As Yuuri slid closed the windowpane, his skin chilled. With the sun long since hidden away, the moon casting its pearly echo of morning’s light, the world was quiet. If Yuuri listened hard enough, though, he could hear the whispers.

The glass was cold and unyielding under his touch. Yuuri let it fall away, as he slipped off the windowsill and into his mother’s trailing vines. They covered the house in a chokehold, and Hiroko was very fond of them—though whether she enjoyed the flowers they bore, or the plants’ possible homicidal intents, was a mystery. In any case, they made an excellent ladder.

The journey was easy from there, and Yuuri knew it well. Along his part were tied several knots of his mother’s heavy yarn; dyed his favorite color—a blue the color of a clear winter’s sky. Fallen leaves of every hue—but for the most part a dying, sun-roasted red—lay draped over tall stems of grass, and created for Yuuri small tunnels along his path. They blocked out the moonlight where they had fallen, haphazard patches of moonbeams lighting Yuuri’s way.

At the end of the path was a pond, still as glass and reflecting the moonlight in a soft, pale glow.

They were tied to a branch by the bank, just like they always were.

Yuuri breathed in deeply, and smiled.

 

* * *

 

When the beautiful creature strapped moonlight to their feet, Victor found himself taken aback; curious in a way that he hadn’t been for countless seasons’ passing.

When they stepped out onto the water, no wings to keep them afloat, and _danced,_ the world stood still.

When they glanced towards Victor’s hiding place—which he seemed to have drifted away from in his reverie—they stopped dancing, stopped moving altogether—

their eyes met his—

the light of the stars flickered in their dark, night sky eyes—

and Victor found that he could not look away.

 

**Author's Note:**

> first contribution to the fandom!!!!!! i've fallen so hard for these beautiful softs....do let me know what you thought!! all feedback makes my heart sing. <3


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